Time Magazine Honors Danny Rensch With Prestigious Award
Once again a major news media has honored one of Chess.com’s own. Time magazine announces in its April 1 edition that it has selected IM Danny Rensch as the recipient of its inaugural Pawn of the Year designation.
The magazine salutes Rensch for being recognized around the world as the face of repetitive meltdowns and system failures at Chess.com. Whenever members cannot connect to a page on the website, they are immediately greeted by the Chief Chess Officer.
Much like respected chess players who have been celebrated with nicknames such as GothamChess, Tiger of Madras, and The Yerminator, Rensch is also better known by his nickname, “Error 404.”
In engineering circles, Rensch is highly respected for how quickly he dons a green pawn suit to communicate that a web address has been mistyped, a webpage no longer exists, and a webpage has been moved to a new address without adequate steps to redirect visitors. In fact, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority is considering a proposal to retitle “Error 404” as “Rensch Blunder.”
Because of how universally Rensch’s name is associated with fiascos, the prestigious The Oxford English Dictionary has added a new noun—rensch—with the meanings of blunderer and screwup. Even Chess.com has just changed the name of a move classification to honor Rensch. In its prestigious Game Review, the term blunder is now rensch.
Although Rensch has a lifetime of amazing honors and achievements, he is not content to rest on his laurels. He now competes in Olympic events. Shocking even his trainer and most ardent fans, he finished in fourth place in the most recent Summer Olympics in the 20-meter pawn dash with a very commendable time of 10.3 seconds, missing a bronze medal by 0.002 seconds. He is now a favorite to earn the gold medal in the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics.
Fans from around the world flock to see him train for the Olympics (when he is not preoccupied with correcting system failures at Chess.com). The green pawns that they wear on their cheeks help security officials to identify them easily. Some very dedicated fans even have a green pawn tattooed in places on their bodies not readily viewed by the general public.
The selection of Rensch by Time as its first Pawn of the Year clearly signifies his special position in the chess community. The magazine will likely be unable to find someone of such prominence should they even try to award this designation again. Perhaps the inaugural award should have been Pawn for Eternity rather than Pawn of the Year.
Ray Linville’s high point as a chess player occurred when he swiped the queen of GM Hikaru Nakamura in a 60-second bullet game in 2021. This game was reported in a “My Best Move” column of the Chess Life magazine, published by the U.S. Chess Federation.
At Chess.com, he has been an editor (part-time) since 2019 and has edited news articles and tournament reports—including those of the Candidates and World Championship Tournaments and other major events—by titled players and noted chess writers as well as Game of the Day annotations by leading grandmasters. He has also been a contributing writer of chess terms, e-books, and general interest articles for ChessKid.com.
He enjoys “top blogger” status at Chess.com. His blog has won the award for Best Chess Blog from the Chess Journalists of America for several years. In addition, he has also been the recipient of first-place CJA awards for feature article, humorous contribution, online review, and educational lesson as well as honorable mention in the categories of personal narrative and historical article.